In English, we say a mystery is "solved", similar to how when we mix powders in water and stir it up, we say the powder is "dissolved". It means that the small parts of the powder has loosen and broken apart and they're all now one with the water.
A mystery is a bit like that. I've been playing Return of the Obra Dinn, a game where you figure out the fates and identity of about sixty people by seeing their exact moment of death. It's a game about collecting lots of little clues, bits and details, and try to piece them together into a whole picture. At first it was difficult to see how these many, disparate parts fit together, but we stir them up and see what sticks out and soon we see them taking shapes in our mind, how they fit perfectly into each other. We found the "solution", the small bits combined as one whole thing.
In Indonesia, we say that a mystery is "shattered", the same word we use if we throw a rock at a wall made of glass. Now I don't actually know the etymology of his word, but finding the answer to a mystery is like having some blockade in my head shattered down, with the exact weight of the word. My head became freer. Obra Dinn is full of many interconnected mysteries, and solving one, "shattering" one, is opening up more paths to solve another.
Another word we use to describe what we do to a mystery is to "unravel" it. Like a ball of strings stuck together, we patiently take one string and try to figure out where it comes from and where it ends, and again for all the other strings. The more strings you unravel, the easier that you can see the true shape of them. The Indonesian equivalent to this would be "peeling", as in peeling the skin of an apple. When at first we can only see the red surface, we take off the skin and we see the true white flesh underneath.
Return of the Obra Dinn is really good, you guys. Go buy it and play it.
